palace of winds

The mood in the airport is one of veiled tension. There are all of the old trappings of the way things were — the scattering of kiosks full of last-minutes, all gum and sunglasses and cheap trinkets. The unmanned information counter. The bright posters promising eternal sun over sparkling seas and better teeth and perfect reception. And then there are the old checkpoints with the new guards. Young and nonchalant and a little terrifying for it. The lazy weight of their power. Their laughing assurance.

This is the last gateway; if we can make it through and onto our flight and into the air we will be free from here — this city, this country, this planet. My sister is at my elbow, my mother just ahead of us. We are a happy, dutiful, unassuming family; we are happily going on vacation, unaware of the way the world is turning now, the change sweeping through. Of course we plan to return. Why wouldn’t we?

And so we make it past the guards and are swept along in the general tide of traffic, but then the hallway bends and beyond us my mother is lost for a moment from sight, and then she is just lost. Vanished. We pretend not to have noticed, walking on, but shortly I see my mother’s work badge clipped on a storefront display. I take it as we pass, and a few stalls later I pause by another display, deftly removing two of my mother’s pins from a little rack of earrings and slipping them into my pocket with the badge. They are the only clues she’s left us, the badge she dropped and the valuables taken from her, already on display for sale.

If they have seen me I will be stopped for shoplifting, and it will be clear that I am suspicious about my mother’s disappearance. If I’m caught with these items, it’s over. And so when I see guards moving through the crowd up ahead, working leisurely my way, I turn and begin retracing my steps as my sister continues on. I slip my hand into my pocket and trace the hard corners of the badge, my heart in my throat. Do I dare keep it? Do I dare drop it? As I am passing through the Walmart clothing section I let the badge and pins fall, praying that no good samaritan will see and try to return them to me. I walk faster, veer right, heading into the tall labyrinth of the garden center. It is nearly deserted here, harder to hide. I reach the end of an aisle to discover a maintenance man. He looks up from his pitchfork and bucket and though we’ve never met we recognize each other at once. He steps forward and we fall silently in pace together, and a moment later he takes my hand. I am doomed but my relief at this small contact is staggering. Our fingers slide together, dark and light and dark, and he leads me onward, buying me what time he can. In other circumstances, in another life, if we make it out of here alive, we will be lovers, will be delirious with each other, will build a quiet private life on some secluded shore and make dozens of fat, happy babies.

After I am found I am taken to the children’s barracks, a big room with rows and rows of beds all crowded together and kids eight to eighteen, the scared and the devastated and those already hardened, snide, the old hats, the hopeless. All the orphans of this new regime. My brother finds me, Mark with his thatch of blonde hair and sharp ferret’s face behind round silver glasses. Mark, twelve, who should be too old for whining, for the fuss he raises, but behind it is fear and I quiet him, help him find a bed, tell him things will be all right.

Later the mothers are brought around, part of the charade that things are okay, that everything is above-board. We see her only briefly but already she looks older, exhausted, a little hopeless. We don’t get a chance to speak and I do not know what they are doing to her, what work they are making her do, what life they’re robbing, but I know she will not last long. And I know soon they will be taking me to the other place, me and the other girls, and if there is to be any chance for any of us we must act soon.